Michael+Reese+Hospital

A study done in 1918 at Michael Reese Hospital challenges claims by abortion-rights organizations that prior to //Roe vs. Wade//, American hospitals had wards full of dying septic abortion cases.

[|Surgery, gynecology & obstetrics, Volume 26 By Franklin H. Martin Memorial Foundation, American College of Surgeons, 1918] will give us a contemporary account.Dr. Julius E. Lackner at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, a charity hospital that had a policy of never turning away patients.

"I reported 500 cases occurring in the service of Drs. Banga and Fninkenthal at the Michael Reese Hospital in the years 1900 to 1914. Of these 500 cases 4 died."

I have identified two induced abortion deaths at Michael Reese hospital during the time studied:
 * **@Bessie Braun**, 1906
 * **@Lizzie Orenstein**, 1913

Either the two remaining deaths were due to miscarriages, or they escaped the notice of the media as well as law enforcement.

Five hundred abortion cases in 15 years is about 34 a year, or roughly one admission every 11 days. That hardly constitutes an entire ward full of septic abortion cases, even in this charity hospital. The mortality rate, in those days before blood transfusions and antibiotics, was less than 1%. Also, keep in mind, this case load is comprised of //all// women admitted to Michael Reese Hospital whose pregnancies ended before about six months, both naturally and due to criminal interference. The claims of massive septic abortion wards and astronomical mortality rates don't hold up to scrutiny.